FBI arrests Minneapolis man, 59, linked to bombing, vandalizing salon over consecutive years

A 59-year-old Minneapolis man set off a bomb at a hair salon in the city in 2022 and returned a year later to lob a brick through its window, according to federal charges unsealed this week.

The FBI arrested Michael Allen Francisco on charges of using an explosive to “maliciously damage or destroy” a business after a multiyear investigation that included forensic analysis and an eventual alleged admission during a search of the man’s home March 28.

According to a sworn affidavit from a special agent assigned to the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, video footage from a Ring device showed a man allegedly identified as Francisco placing an explosive device on the window of the Studio 411 salon, 411 S. Cedar Lake Road, and fleeing in a vehicle before it detonated at about 2:49 a.m. on Nov. 20, 2022.

Francisco was also identified in video footage recorded a year later in which he threw a landscaping brick through a window at the salon around 1:25 a.m. on Nov. 6, 2023.

Last week, on March 28, the FBI and Minneapolis police searched Francisco’s home and seized a black jacket suspected to be worn by Francisco during the brick-throwing incident. Agents also found multiple explosive components included suspected “energetic powders and fuses,” a .32 caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver with ammunition, and suspected methamphetamine. Francisco has a prior federal bank robbery conviction from 2001 for which he was sentenced to 12½ years in federal prison, thus making him prohibited from possessing a firearm.

In interviews with law enforcement during the search, Francisco later confessed both verbally and in writing to lighting the fuse on the explosive device that damaged Studio 411 and throwing the landscaping brick at the salon’s window a year later.

Francisco made a brief initial appearance in federal court in Minneapolis, in which he was ordered temporarily detained pending a detention and preliminary hearing next week. Francisco does not yet have an attorney assigned to represent him.

Analysts from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) collected a mixture of DNA found on the brick tossed through the salon window last year and reported in January that Francisco could not be ruled out as a possible contributor.

The FBI reviewed police records and found that Francisco was linked to another case of possessing an explosive device: In March 2023, Minneapolis police found Francisco trespassing near an abandoned lumber yard in northeast Minneapolis. He left the area on foot but officers noticed a Ford F-150 pickup truck nearby running, unlocked and abandoned. Before towing the truck, they found an explosive device inside the center console area that the department’s bomb squad recovered and inventoried.

According to the complaint, fragments of the device found at Studio 411 included paper or cardboard material with a red, white and blue color pattern that matched the device found in the truck.